Food for Thought

Journalists should not be neutral, according to your text. If this is the case, how do they accurately cover the news? How does this influence your perspective on the news?

Above you see the definition of the word neutral. As we've heard countless times, this should be what a journalist strives for: impartiality, just reporting the news without opining it. But as I may have previously ranted about, this simply is not the case. That's because journalism is not written by impersonal machines (not yet anyways,) it's written by humans. People. And people have opinions and thoughts and emotions, things that must be quashed in order to write a truly unbiased piece of journalism. An interesting contradiction: reporters and journalists, guardians of the free press and the standard bearers of free speech, are forced to rein in their own opinions and walk the tightrope of neutrality when publishing their work? This seems contradictory, though journalism organizations (claim to) stake their reputations on doing exactly that. 

You didn't expect you'd doing this when you got that job at the newspaper, did you?

So is there such a thing as an objective press? The short answer, essentially, is no. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's natural to have bias, but it is important to recognize that fact and acknowledge it. More importantly, the public needs to realize this and make informed media decisions.   Using the vast power of the Internet that we have essentially sitting on hand, we have the ability and duty to make sure what we read and watch is conforming to the truth. A metaphor: if journalism is food, then watch what you eat. And try to keep a balanced diet. Don't just pig out on junk.

Pictured above: Unhealthy media consumption habits

Here's a very interesting article on objectivity in journalism I found (ironically enough) at the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karthika-muthukumaraswamy/media-has-a-yang_b_1921683.html

Enjoy and peace out.